Who can succeed? Getting online isn’t enough on its own. Everyone needs skills to read, write and participate in the digital world.
It is incredibly important that every New Yorker has the ability and opportunity to read, write, and participate online. Along with developing core 21C skills such as problem-solving and collaboration, web literacy, developed through this framework and support from the Institute for Media and Library Services (IMLS), helps people build and create content to make meaning through coding, composing, and remixing; to comprehend and navigate the web through evaluation, synthesis, and search skills; and to produce creative and secure online communities through principled conduct, among other things. Taken together, these essential elements of the digital era knowledge enable us be advocates for a healthy internet, and in turn, health societies.
The City of New York and community partners have invested in a number of programs that help New Yorkers – young and old – become healthier internet citizens. One significant undertaking has been the Computer Science for All initiative (CS4All). Led by the NYC Department of Education, and part of Mayor de Blasio’s Equity and Excellence agenda, it has been tasked with an ambitious goal: by 2025, train 5,000 K-12 teachers to bring CS education to the City’s 1.1 million public school students, with an emphasis on girls and students of color. With CS, students learn computational thinking, problem-solving, and collaboration to create with and better understand the technologies we interact with daily. CS4All provides teachers and school leaders with intensive professional development opportunities and high-quality curriculum. All training and resources are aligned to the CS4All Blueprint, an online academic and implementation guide for teaching CS in schools. Since the initiative launched in 2015, over 5,000 students have taken an AP Computer Science exam, 1,600 teachers trained, and 700 schools served.
The City also operates a large and wide-ranging network of public computer centers through its libraries, community centers, and senior centers. Managed by the New York, Brooklyn, and Queens Public Libraries, the Department of Parks and Recreation, the Department for the Aging, Department of Youth and Community Development, and the NYC Housing Authority, these 510 centers offer New Yorkers free access to computers and the internet – over 11,000 public workstations, and over 21,000 hours per week in open lab time. And they deliver a diverse array of digital tools and training programs. Skills training in these centers, offered at an average of over 2,800 hours per week across facilities, ranges from computer basics and introductions to email and search, to advanced topics like coding, robotics, and digital audio production. As part of this work, for example, the NYC Parks Department offers free media programs that range from filmmaking to game design. Similarly, the Department for the Aging offers older New Yorkers free digital skills training in topics like civic engagement, financial literacy, and health management. The Mayor’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer works to coordinate this broad network of resources and programs, in particular supporting a subset of centers through its multi-agency NYC Connected Communities program.
This year, NYC also approved the future development of the Union Square Tech Training Center, which will offer digital skills training and be operated by Civic Hall. The Center will focus on training under-represented New Yorkers who don’t have access to the digital skills education needed to work in the tech industry.
On the community side, NYC boasts an impressive ecosystem of afterschool and informal learning organizations, many of which offer creative digital learning for young people. From the Staten Island MakerSpace, to the Museum of the Moving Image and New York Hall of Science in Queens to The Knowledge House in the Bronx, there is a core network of providers growing web literacy.
Anchored in Hive NYC, a member-led peer learning network facilitated by representatives from organizations such as MOUSE, BeamCenter, and Dream Yard, over 60 non-profit organizations, such as museums, libraries, code clubs, advocacy groups, higher education institutions, and afterschool programs generate equitable and accessible education opportunities for thousands of young people to explore their digital interests through innovation, collaboration, discovery, and making.
Documenting the importance of networks for digital learning in NYC is this report from Hive Research Lab, which offers a toolkit for supporting young people developing skills beyond web literacy to the next step of life. Reflecting and celebrating the Hive network’s successes is Emoti-Con, NYC's biggest showcase for young designers, makers, technologists, and tinkerers who believe in digital literacies as a tool for positive change.
Web literacy helps the next generation get online as the builders, not just consumers, of the internet.
“we need to change who’s at the wheel.”
Michael Preston is a managing partner of CSforALL, which makes high-quality computer science an integral part of learning for K-12 students and teachers, and promotes adoption of the computational thinking skills, so they are creators in the digital economy, not just consumers. With its origins as CSNYC, supporters of a dynamic NYC experiment, CSforALL now boasts over 500 member organizations nationally – from content providers to school districts to funders – connecting stakeholders, supporting new initiatives, and sharing progress with local and national audiences. CSforALL facilitates the emergence of thoughtful, active, and ethical citizens that our technology-driven world needs. A participatory, ground-up approach to computer science is key for learning and a more web literate population.
Tell us about your work.
In 2013, while at the NYC Department of Education (DoE), I started working on a project to bring sequences of computer science (CS) courses to middle and high schools. Later I joined CSNYC, a non-profit organization with a mission of providing high-quality CS to every public student in NYC’s K-12 system. Early on, CSNYC demonstrated that teachers from any discipline can effectively teach CS; they didn’t need to be experts to provide meaningful learning experiences. The work quickly expanded and, in 2015, with the City’s equity and excellence initiatives, Mayor de Blasio announced the creation of CS4All, a 10-year initiative to reach all 1.1 million students in the city’s public schools. The launch of CS4All enabled us to transition our work to the NYC DoE as a public-private partnership. Thanks to leaders like Debbie Marcus, NYC embraced an ambitious goal of serving every student – truly “computer science for all” – at every level of schooling across K-12 bytraining 5,000 teachers in over 1,500 schools. The NYC DoE also created an online blueprint that defines K-12 computer science according to a set of commonly agreed upon concepts and practices. It’s available to other districts and states, demonstrating how a major city is does it.
The human side of CS is creative problem-solving, collaboration, and communication skills. It’s also why web literacy matters; it’s complementary to CS. Both focus on how things work, their implications for society, and the need for ethics, and both explore issues such as the impact of bias on data and the secure flow of information across networks. Be critical, be safe, be productive.
What are you proud of?
New York City’s CS4All initiative grew out of a dynamic pairing of local knowledge and relationships. Working with common purpose enabled CS to rise to the national stage, and our role as facilitators of that collective progress. During the 2017-18 school year, nearly 135,000 students experienced hands-on, meaningful CS education across city schools – a 44% increase from the previous year. Nationally, over 40 states in the US have set a CS policy in motion, generating conditions for a more equitable pathway to college and career success.
All of this came together at our Detroit Summit: 500 people attended, with 270 commitments to bring 47 million learning opportunities to students and teachers in the coming year. We also announced a new advisory board and Accessibility Pledge focused on serving students with disabilities in computing education.
What challenges persist to developing CS skills – locally and beyond?
There are two intertwined problems: equity and implementation. Regarding equity, the reality is that CS is not activating the talent it needs. Increasingly, the designers, architects, and builders of CS must reflect the lived experience of many, especially underrepresented communities. We must make sure kids have tools that help them address what they care about in their daily lives. The greater diversity of people who have CS skills, the more they can directly and accurately respond to issues that our communities face – violence, health problems, racial, gender, and other kinds of discrimination – rather than technology companies exclusively deciding what problems need to be solved. Also, we can do better to avoid really bad outcomes like biased facial recognition fiascos or ethical challenges of tech that disproportionately affect the vulnerable. One important step toward doing better is changing who’s at the wheel.
The other challenge is implementation, which is low across the country. There’s still a sense among leaders that CS is some sort of specialized knowledge, and that it’s too hard. That fear can inhibit school districts and cities from making good decisions for CS based on what they already know about their local contexts and student populations. Another hurdle is making the case for CS as worthy of a systemic change approach, when some see this as an unreplicable NYC initiative. So we work with districts around the country using generalizable tools and helping them get clarity on why a common vision for why CS matters. Getting districts on board and multiple stakeholders saying why CS matters to their community – jobs, civic engagement, joy, equity, education reform – helps create a way for districts and their communities to define a locally-owned approach. Without local ownership, we risk losing momentum, and even the CS movement altogether, if we accept really low-level implementation that just reinforces current inequalities.
How can NYC be an active partner in this work?
CS4All has had some necessary conditions in place from the start: for example, a very engaged community, a high-functioning DoE, and ongoing internet and infrastructure upgrades to schools. Not every community has high-quality schools and investments in tech infrastructure or programs. All of these factors have been significant. That said, investments have not always targeted maintaining the CS infrastructure. Most schools continue to have terrible bandwidth. Furthermore, the homework gap based on broadband access is real, especially for homeless and home-insecure students.
Final Word
Practically everything we use today is a computer – most modes of transportation, entertainment devices, and even kitchen appliances. People must decide for themselves how to participate in the design and development of new technologies, and until we fix that, we will continue to suffer from a representation issue that continues to reproduce the conditions of inequality. When we get to year 10 of CS4All, will that be enough? How do we make sure this work becomes the new normal?
**Since this interview was conducted, Michael Preston has transitioned to a new position as Executive Director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, a research and innovation lab that works to advance children's learning with media and technology.
“we need to know how our data is being used by entities of all shapes and sizes”
Davis Erin Anderson is the Program Manager for Technology, Culture & Libraries at the Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO), a membership organization serving 250 institutions, reaching thousands of library staff members across NYC and Westchester County. A web literacy expert, Davis offers training and resources that advance critical skills for public library staff and patrons. She helps learners build capacity to “read, write, and participate” online through evaluating, creating, and protecting online information.. Her leadership means more people understand how to safely access and use the web they want, not just the web they have.
Tell us about your work.
I work to understand the impact of technology on culture at large, translating these challenges into real solutions for library staff. I foster partnerships with our library systems, as well as groups like Data & Society and Digital Equity Lab at The New School. I also conduct lots of trainings with Mozilla’s Core Curriculum for Web Literacy. I recently designed and facilitated workshops for members of NYC’s Partnership for AfterSchool Education, a network of informal practitioners. Our learners got really into a hands-on, design-your-own algorithm activity. They contributed real-life examples of what it means to have a web that broadcasts unique content for each individual based on data-profiling. They taught me just as much as I taught them!
What are you proud of?
From email at work to social media on the subway to television at home, we are consistently providing tech companies with a wealth of data about our lives. It’s critical we stay focused on digital trends and what they mean for library patrons, especially underserved populations who are exposed to far more threat.
To mitigate these risks, I directed NYC Digital Safety: Privacy & Security, funded by the City of New York Mayor’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer. In collaboration with Brooklyn Public Library, New York Public Library, and Queens Library, I facilitated an effort to design and deploy online modules and in-person curriculum. These resources helped public library staff understand online privacy and security so that they can assist patrons. More than 1,100 library staff across the five boroughs participated in a NYC Digital Safety training. There is now at least one “privacy expert” at nearly all 215 branches across the city.
And we didn’t stop there! To celebrate, NYC’s three library systems and METRO launched the first Library Privacy Week. Together, libraries across the city hosted 30 events exploring ways people can protect their personally identifiable data online. We also worked with ten local artists and nine NYC library branches to host a multi-site art exhibit that interrogated what it means to sacrifice our personal information for the sake of convenience. Examples of the artworks can be found at Privacy in Public. With a second-round of funding secured, we plan to design tools to help library staff move this information into the minds of the public.
What challenges persist to developing web literacy skills – locally and beyond?
People who need web literacy skills most are also more unlikely to attend trainings due to pressing needs in their lives – they work multiple jobs, cannot afford childcare, or have a appointments to keep in order to maintain their link to social services. We face challenges in closing the gap between what residents need to know and what library staff has been trained to share.
Libraries are, at heart, a natural antidote against these things: providing access to high quality, vetted information is in the library’s DNA. Protecting patron privacy is our cornerstone ethos. But as a society, we need a deeper conversation. We need to popularize and build on the work of researchers like Safiya Umoja Noble, studying algorithmic bias, machine-learning, and social justice regarding the information infrastructure.
How can NYC be an active partner in this work?
The city is well-positioned to build coalitions that unite key players and help rally library systems to collectively mitigate the harm caused by a predatory data-gathering environment. But a better question is why put libraries in this position in the first place? Libraries have been – and will continue to be – a trusted voice for advancing “reading, writing, and participating” online safely and securely, in service to an informed public. We need a better approach to data protection, full stop. Without a coordinated response, these issues are left to the individual. The sheer realities around personal privacy on the internet can easily lead to disempowerment. We need effective approaches to keeping our data safe, real regulation in the technology space, and more accountability when it comes to data privacy.
Final Word
Education is a catalyst for change. The connection between web literacy and privacy is essential: we need to know how our data is being used by entities of all shapes and sizes. Awareness is a great first step, but we have to move into creating power for ourselves and our communities. Moving that power into collective action can send our governing bodies the message that we need clear rules in place to control how our data is being collected, retained, and used.